Posted on 10/29/2020 5:27:07 AM PDT by Red Badger
People with dementia are more likely to go missing in areas where road networks are dense, complicated and disordered—according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
Researchers studied hundreds of 'missing person' police reports for people with dementia and compared each case to the surrounding road network.
They hope their findings could help inform future safeguarding guidelines.
Prof Michael Hornberger, from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "People with dementia getting lost or going missing is a problem worldwide. Around 70 percent of people with dementia may go missing at least once, with some at risk of going missing multiple times.
"Around 40,000 people with dementia go missing for the first time every year in the UK—and this figure is likely to grow with the projected increase in the dementia population.
"Unfortunately, the first event when people with dementia go missing comes completely out of the blue, when doing such routine activities as going for a walk with the dog or getting the newspaper from the local shop.
"When a person with dementia goes missing, it can have life-threatening consequences. But very little is known about what actually causes people with dementia to go missing."
The research team set out to find out whether the design of road networks could be linked to people going missing.
They looked at 210 police records of people with dementia going missing in Norfolk over three years—and compared each case to the nearby road network.
Ph.D. student Vaisakh Puthusseryppady, also from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "We know that people with dementia have difficulty navigating so we wanted to see whether there was a relationship between people going missing and the outdoor environment they went missing from.
"We were particularly interested in road layouts as they determine significantly our navigation, in particular the complexity of the road network, the complexity of road intersections, and how ordered the overall layout of the road network is.
"We found that the higher the density of road intersections, the more complicated the road intersections are, and the less ordered or less grid-like the overall road network layout, the greater the risk for people with dementia to get lost.
"We think this is because each road intersection represents a point at which a person needs to make a critical navigation decision. The more intersections there are, the more complex these intersections are, and the more disorganised the overall road network is—the bigger the problem for people with dementia.
"This is because these factors can make it more likely for people with dementia to make an error and make a wrong turn, causing them to get lost and go missing.
"We hope that by identifying these environmental risk factors, our findings can potentially help identify or predict areas where people with dementia may be at higher risk of going missing from—and contribute to the development of safeguarding guidelines to prevent them from going missing in future.
"It will also inform future recommendations for dementia-friendly urban design," he added.
'Impact of road network structure on dementia-related missing incidents: a spatial buffer approach' is published in the journal Scientific Reports on October 29, 2020.
Explore further: Dementia leading cause of death in September
For me it’s (just before unfamiliar major interchange) “GPS signal lost.”
The father of my friend would drive to town. Since the town he was going to was actually no longer there, he became very confused. None of the businesses he was looking for were still in town.
So, he went to his insurance agengy. They arranged to get him home. That happened several times until his driving privaledges were removed.
Yes, we had a problem with this in my family.
The doctors weren’t sure if Aunt Melba, a lifelong Democrat by the way,
was suffering from Dementia or AIDS.
She was an extremely difficult person, and an extremely difficult case.
In any case they told us how to diagnose her condition.
So:
Per orders,
We woke her up at 11pm or so and drove her, blindfolded, all the way to Bismarck, North Dakota, where she had never been, and dropped her off at a truck stop.
Alas, she found her way back.
So we shot her.
Looks like US 50 just East of Fallon, NV. The loneliest highway in America.
My mom needed to stay at our house for week because my sister needed a break.
She was here (200 miles from her house) two or three days when one morning at 2:30 my minpin (Saint Duke) started a low growl. Hmmm, SWMBO and I got up to investigate. The front door was open, and mom was out barefoot in our gravel driveway (57 stone....ouch!) looking for her car keys. She was dropped off, and hadn’t had a car in 5 or 6 years.
Our saintly minpin got a goodie for his alertness.
Small terriers are very alert.
Quick - pull Joe Biden’s driver’s license.
Is this why almost ever single Biden campaign appearance is restricted to locations within an hour of his Delaware basement?
*ouch*
My aunt left home to go to the grocery store down the street and ended up in a Harley Davidson dealership 40 miles away. She is still mad about losing her license.
Just the exact opposite for me.....................
So we shot her.
You shot her???
At first...yeah
Too many recommendations to list, but we always try to get to Saluté on Smathers Beach,, and the Sunday brunch at the Margaritaville (former Westin) is always fantastic (if they’re doing it.
That looks like every highway in Nevada!
In a follow up article titled “Water Is Wet” the University of East Anglia examines another brutally obvious factoid.
These are some of the leading rocket surgeons and brain scientists behind the globull warming scam.
LOL!
When we lived in Juneau, an elderly cruise ship passenger disappeared and could not be found - until two years later some hikers found his remains and Rolex watch halfway up a small mountain behind the building where I worked. He was nearly six miles from where the ship was docked.
Seriously? This is accepted as serious research? Brought to us by the same university that brought the hockey stick of globull warming.
LMAO.
Somebody tell me the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s. Why distinguish them as different?
My late Mother had Alzheimer’s and died from it. Other than forgetting how to eat and drink she was a healthy 92. She shut down. It was horrible.
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